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Blogging against Disablism Day already, huh? As always, my focus is on perceptions and treatment of physically disabled employees, mostly because I am one. Since the infuriating erasure of disabled employees I blogged about last year, I've been making a point of being louder and angrier at work. I don't think it's good for my career, but at a certain point I just don't care.
In one meeting, I more or less started crying. After a certain amount of back and forth about why accessibility was an afterthought, I said "Look, the tool you guys built for us forces me to ask my coworkers to do parts of my job for me," and my colleague replied "Is it really reasonable for us to consider the needs of that 2% to be as important as the needs of the 98%?" My response -- and this is when I couldn't help the tears of anger -- was "We are not talking about an invisible 2%. We are talking about me. Your coworker, the person you work with everyday. The person sitting across from you at this table in this meeting. I can't do my job. Damn straight I want you to consider my needs as important as everybody else in this room."
Like I said, probably not that good for my career. But after that meeting, three different attendees of the meeting, people who had argued with me or sat silently during the whole emotional back and forth, came up to me and asked for help dealing with accessibility requirements for products they were choosing.
In the last year, there has been some progress. For at least one enterprise-wide software decision, there is at least a goal for accessibility not to be an afterthought. In that case, a multiperson accessibility assessment team has been gathering information about the products under consideration. For several other enterprise-wide software decisions, accessibility is getting only the most minimal lip service (accessibility testing is happening after decisions are all but made). Still, this is an improvement; even that lip service accessibility testing wouldn't have happened 12 months ago.
What improvements have happened had only come from me being a gadfly. My attempts to convince the organization as a whole to consider technological accessibility when making purchasing decisions as part of organizational process has thus far been fruitless.
I am sick of being a pest. I understand that it is part of my job as someone with Invisible Physical Disability Privilege, at least given that I also have substantial class privilege. It is exhausting to always be Annoying Accessibility Girl.
In one meeting, I more or less started crying. After a certain amount of back and forth about why accessibility was an afterthought, I said "Look, the tool you guys built for us forces me to ask my coworkers to do parts of my job for me," and my colleague replied "Is it really reasonable for us to consider the needs of that 2% to be as important as the needs of the 98%?" My response -- and this is when I couldn't help the tears of anger -- was "We are not talking about an invisible 2%. We are talking about me. Your coworker, the person you work with everyday. The person sitting across from you at this table in this meeting. I can't do my job. Damn straight I want you to consider my needs as important as everybody else in this room."
Like I said, probably not that good for my career. But after that meeting, three different attendees of the meeting, people who had argued with me or sat silently during the whole emotional back and forth, came up to me and asked for help dealing with accessibility requirements for products they were choosing.
In the last year, there has been some progress. For at least one enterprise-wide software decision, there is at least a goal for accessibility not to be an afterthought. In that case, a multiperson accessibility assessment team has been gathering information about the products under consideration. For several other enterprise-wide software decisions, accessibility is getting only the most minimal lip service (accessibility testing is happening after decisions are all but made). Still, this is an improvement; even that lip service accessibility testing wouldn't have happened 12 months ago.
What improvements have happened had only come from me being a gadfly. My attempts to convince the organization as a whole to consider technological accessibility when making purchasing decisions as part of organizational process has thus far been fruitless.
I am sick of being a pest. I understand that it is part of my job as someone with Invisible Physical Disability Privilege, at least given that I also have substantial class privilege. It is exhausting to always be Annoying Accessibility Girl.
I want to learn to be Annoying Accessibility Girl at work sometimes.
It sucks being the advocate all the time! Those of us with fewer spoons end up spending them all just to get to the starting line. CIVILIZATION, YOU"RE DOING IT WRONG
From my living on both sides of the curtain, nonvisible impairments have as many minuses as pluses, so don't be lashing yourself with an "Invisible disability privilege" meme.
that's interesting what you say about non-visible versus visible issues. I never really thought about it except in as much as when I go out with my sister (who's in a wheelchair) the way everyone talks to me to ask things like "would she like a drink?" And, okay, she actually isn't the best person to be answering that question for herself, but there is no way that they can tell that by looking at her.
NTE
www.neverthateasy.blogspot.com
I've also included this post in the BADD 2009 on Dreamwidth at
And ooh, cool, going to check out the community now.
Peter
Sometimes in any given day I will go back and forth between self-righteous and chicken-out mode five times a day.